You've a snowflake’s chance in hell of us keeping quiet over Trump

Blaise Tapp

Am I an honorary snowflake? That is the question I have been asking myself during these first few days of what are bound to become known as the Trump Years.

While I had a sneaking suspicion that both the polls and popular wisdom were wrong, I, like billions of others across the globe, crossed my fingers in the hope that this two horse race was a foregone conclusion.

We were wrong, now we need to get on with it and accept that, even though we disagree profoundly with the result, democracy prevailed and we now have to jolly well get on with making the best of it. Wrong again.

I am pretty confident that I have not been alone in hoping that the past week has been a particularly cruel nightmare and that I will do a ‘Bobby Ewing’ and wake up in the shower.

But sadly this is real. Trump will soon officially be the most powerful man in the world whether many of us like it or not. There have been the inevitable protests across the United States and, already, acres of print and screen space have been devoted to think pieces about why this really is a low point of the 21st Century.

The day after America’s political revolution, Britain’s most famous caravaner, the former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gloomily told journalists ‘it feels like the end of the world’. She wasn’t alone: the first question my seven-year-old asked me when she awoke at 5.55am last Wednesday was ‘who has won?’. My answer was met with an ‘oh no’ before she ran downstairs to sit in silence in front of the news for an hour.

Apparently, the election had been the talk of the playground and they had all agreed, in between swapping Star Wars cards and games of tig, that a Trump presidency would be a disaster. I lied and tried to reassure her that there is no need to worry but I still do share her initial pessimism (she has since been distracted by more pressing issues such as writing to Father Christmas.)

Since last Wednesday morning I have spent hours scratching my head while fretting over the future with friends and loved ones not to mention - doing what people do nowadays when they are really upset - and writing lots of angst ridden social media posts.

Facebook and Twitter are currently full to the brim with protest updates from across the world, underlining the fact that most of us now have a voice.

Inevitably there is a hardcore of right wingers and contrarians who think we should just shut up about Trump, Brexit and Leicester City winning the Premier League. It has happened, therefore it is childish to keep banging on about it.

The term snowflake is now in vogue and is being used to describe protesters, usually younger people, who make a lot of fuss about the state of the world and has quickly gained traction, the inference being that an unwillingness to accept democratic outcomes is a sign of weakness.

The label is being attached to anybody who makes a fuss about things that your average Top Gear fan would agree with in a clumsy attempt to shut down debate.

Debate and sensible scrutiny is the best way to tackle the challenges which face us right now and I have no intention of keeping quiet.